Nothing represents the changing of the guard as much as how the Big Three Portals have fallen from grace. Don’t get me wrong: from an operational standpoint, Yahoo! is a fine property, but that company is a bit of a… how do you say, disaster.
MSN is there, trecking along, costing MSFT billions in losses over the years without really making a push for #1. Sort of like all other MSFT products not named Windows or Office, basically. continue reading...
In shelling out $100M for Powerset, MSFT basically weakens YHOO’s leverage and value. It’s not a coincidence that YHOO is now flirting with $20/share.
I know YHOO’s main value is in traffic and audience, not search technology. But the market is not so discerning, to it, it views MSFT ramping up its search know-how as reducing their appetite for YHOO’s IT in search. continue reading...
Valued at a nosebleed $42.5M value when it received its Series A round, VentureBeat is reporting that Microsoft has acquired PowerSet for $100M.
The company - who licensed search technology from Xerox - has nothing to be ashamed of: a $100M value creation enterprise is impressive, but at a 2x return, Powerset is underwhelming, let’s hope MSFT can leverage its technology to make it match even half of the hype and fanfare it launched to. continue reading...
If Powerset does indeed sell to MSFT, then it’s a perfect case of Buy On The Rumor Sell On The News.
The natural language search startup forever stuck in stealth mode has yet to make a dent in the search space; actually, it’s yet to launch. continue reading...
Earlier this year, Powerset made a lot of noise by securing the rights to natural language technology from Xerox Parc as it set off to index the Web and building a search destination site.
According to the much covered VentureBeat story: continue reading...
Google is the king of search, not by doing anything revolutionary in search, but by simplifying search and improving peripheral sectors like advertising. It did that by acquiring Applied Semantics’ technology and buying its potential competitor Sprinks (see more on this in our Top 10 Best Web Acquisitions of All Time here). The lesson: to win in search, there is no need to radically revolutionize the space, you just need to improve something tangent and you just might win.
Powerset: Natural Language Search continue reading...
